


Music I heard with you was more than music

by havisham



Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: Alternate Universe, American adventures!, F/M, Flappers!, Happiness!, Jazz!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-07
Updated: 2012-03-07
Packaged: 2017-11-01 14:29:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 546
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/357881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/havisham/pseuds/havisham
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Edith goes to New York instead of Mary, her life takes a turn for the unexpected.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Music I heard with you was more than music

**Author's Note:**

> AU for obvious reasons. For mollivanders on LJ.

His name is Clarence Stuyvesant, possibly of the New York Stuyvesants, probably of the New York Stuyvesants, since she does meet him in New York City during one of her grandmother's more interminable dinner-parties. His face lights up as soon as she speaks. "English! You're English!" As if it's such a great discovery.

And she, irritated, answers, "My mother is American," and we have not been properly introduced. (How dare you speak to me!)

But he shakes his head, undaunted, and says, "I am sorry, I really am. I become too enthusiastic when things interest me," his hands expand to take in Edith, the dining room. "My mother tells me that this is a fault."

But he looks at her with frank fascination -- and, well, that is odd enough.

(She is an oddity here, but then again, she was an oddity at home.) 

"But I am not," Edith pauses, unsure whether she should be honest or not, "Interesting."

In England she wouldn't have dared to talk to do so, but here in America, things are -- not free, but looser, a little.

But he shakes his head, like he doesn't believe it.

He isn't handsome, this Clarence, merely pleasant looking, with a strong jaw and a nose that is a little too decided, a thatch of fair hair that defies the strictures of pomade, and a pair of rounded spectacles that only magnify a pair of intense blue eyes.

Edith hunts for a change in subject. "What, pray tell, do you do, Mr. Stuyvesant?"

"Oh!" He seems flustered, and she blushes, for she oughtn't ask that at all, but...

"I'm a musician."

Her granny would be calling for the dogs at this point.

But. Granny isn't here.

"What do you play?"

"The piano."

She studies his hands, and his long, tapered fingers.

"How nice."

"Yes, it's this new thing, you know, they call it jazz, a wholly American thing..." He says this dreamily, like they are not at a stuffy dinner-party on the stuffiest corner of the Upper East Side, but somewhere new and shining. Edith, who was born expecting nothing much, or anything at all, thinks, why -- Why, I can have something new too.

She turns back to Clarence and says, "You must play for me some time."

He smiles -- perhaps he is handsome after all -- and says that he would love to.

+

They hurtle though through a bruising courtship that draws attention from both sides of the Atlantic. His family is old enough to be worth something, and he is rich enough not to be objectionable but -- her mother's voice crackles over the telephone, "Oh Edith. Of course I'm happy for you. But are you sure you aren't making a mistake, somehow?"

She is making a mistake, she knows it, as soon as he shows her the steps to a new dance that lets the partners move so close to each other, until she doesn't know which heartbeat is hers.

Mary sends her a stiff letter of congratulations, and she shows it to Clarence, and he whistles. "She's something all right," and Edith cheerfully agrees.

And she borrows his cigarettes and smokes them, and listens to him play, and reads books, so many books, and wonders whatever stopped her from becoming this person, before.  
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